


Monsters in the Moon

by flowersheep



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F, fem!merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 15:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersheep/pseuds/flowersheep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are monsters. Or at least, that's what the world has led them to believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters in the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> For Merlin Femslash Week - Day 3: complementary

_"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."_

_\- Mark Twain_

  
~  


Freya doesn’t wake on a blood soaked battlefield strewn with the bodies of foes and friends alike. She wakes in a bed, on a thin straw mattress under a scratchy blanket, the wooden ceiling illuminated by the soft glow of a fire burned down to embers in the mantel. For the next few minutes she does nothing but lie there until she hears the scrape of a stool on the floor. Merlin is sitting by the fire, paying her no mind. Her tunic lies on the floor, next to a pile of bloody bandages.

“Did I do that?” Freya’s voice is raspy and she swallows around the dryness in her throat. Merlin startles and turns. The cut stands out on her pale skin.

“No,” Merlin says. She takes her time winding a fresh bandage around her middle before coming over to sit on the edge of the bed. “It was a knight.” Her eyes are haunted in a way that Freya is accustomed to seeing. It’s the same look she sees in mirrors. They are not themselves monsters, but there are monsters hidden within them. Freya wonders what happened on the battlefield after she lost her temper and shifted. But she doesn’t ask.

“Oh,” she says instead. Then, “Where are we?”

“An inn.”

Freya rolls her eyes. “Obviously. I meant what town?”

“Everwick.” 

Not far from the battlefield then. A few hours hard ride. The encampment would have been closer.

“Did we at least win?” Freya asks. Merlin looks away and her answer is so soft Freya almost misses it.

“Yes.”

“Then why did we run?” 

Merlin doesn’t speak for the longest time. Her hands fiddle absently with the rough blanket. “Because they know me for what I am now.”

Freya says nothing. Since King Arthur’s ascension to the throne of Camelot nearly a year ago the ban on magic has been repealed, but that doesn’t mean it’s accepted. Thirty years of fear isn’t easy to shake. Freya’s heard some of the knights, when the evening is late and they’re crowded around each other in the tavern, wits washed away by the local ale, speaking of their worries. There are a few knights in Camelot who possess magic. Sir Mordred, for one. Freya doesn’t know of any who use it in battle, aside from a few protection charms on armor and swords. She’s seen the king take Merlin aside and speak with her privately and it’s only lately that Freya has learned that Arthur wants Merlin to be open about her magic, in the hope that it will encourage others to do so and desensitize those who still fear it to. Every time, Merlin has refused. Freya knows why. 

Merlin’s magic isn’t like the magic other sorcerers wield. There are people who have spent their entire lives studying magic and will only ever dream of being half as powerful as Merlin, who never had a drop of instruction until she was fifteen. And that instruction hadn’t been about teaching her to use it, but rather teaching her how to control it, how to focus it. Freya’s seen her call lightning down from the sky, split the earth in two, raise flames from nothing. Merlin is probably the most powerful sorcerer to ever live. 

And it frightens her. 

Freya sits up and wraps her arms around Merlin’s shoulders. Words dance on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows them all back. Freya knows what it’s like to fear herself, to think of herself as a monster. It’s why she strives to be the kind-hearted, generous person people have come to know her as. Nothing is more important than proving that she is not the monster that lives inside her. It’s different for Merlin. Merlin’s monster is not a literal one that claws it’s way out to perpetuate mindless slaughter, like the curse Freya has suffered since childhood. Merlin’s monster is the part of her that she buries in the deepest recesses of her heart underneath the gentle soul she truly is. This part of her recognizes the power she wields and the things she could do with it. Merlin could bring the entire kingdom to it’s knees without breaking a sweat. So she hides it, forces it away, shoves it as far back in her mind as she can. But that doesn’t make it go away. Sometimes it forces its way to the surface, no matter how hard Merlin tries to hold it back. And when that happens she becomes a person Freya barely recognizes. 

Cold, calculating, ruthless. Merlin is an unstoppable force when she gets like that. Nothing stands in her way. To be her enemy when that hidden darkness rises to the surface is to stare death in the face and know you won’t survive it. The merciful warrior is replaced with a pitiless, almost cruel, sorceress whose only equal is the gods themselves. People know of Freya’s curse. But they would never dream of Merlin’s cruelty and the magic it controls. Until now.

Merlin sighs and turns to touch her forehead Freya’s. “I don’t want to go back,” she whispers. Freya presses a soft kiss to her lips. 

“I know.” But they must. Not tonight though. Tonight they will stay in the inn, curled against each other under the thin, itchy blanket, pretending that there is no war, that they are not knights, that they have no king to serve.


End file.
